


Double Paradox

by pillow forts (pyrorocketeer)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, BAMF Cho Chang, BAMF Harry Potter, F/M, One Shot, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Unspeakable Cho Chang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 06:45:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18047555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrorocketeer/pseuds/pillow%20forts
Summary: Sixeen year old Cho Chang stands on the quidditch stands and waits for her boyfriend to come back to her. Twenty-two year old Cho Chang braves the maze as she tries to save Cedric.The consequences of time-travel are never as neat as they seem.





	Double Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> Amidst the dearth of Cho Chang Fics, here’s my meagre contribution.

Sixeen year old Cho Chang stands on the quidditch stands and waits for her boyfriend to come back to her. Twenty-two year old Cho Chang braves the maze as she tries to find the Portkey, and red sparks light the sky as Krum finds Cedric Diggory's unconscious body.

She sips her polyjuice potion which contain fistfuls of her now alive boyfriend, and she stuffs the flask into her pocket. She replicated her clothes to look just like it was in the newspapers from 1995.

"On the count of three, Cedric?" She glances back at Harry, who’s waiting for her.

"One," she begins. "Two. Three."

 

* * *

 

Dumbledore's eyes glint in the torch-lit stands. "Moody," he says carefully when Harry shows up bedraggled and exhausted, and he's holding the portkey with wide fear-filled eyes. "There was an intruder in the Fourth Challenge."

Moody says nothing, and his electric blue eye darts wildly between Harry and the cup.

When the pull of time-travel ends, Cho throws up in her office. The bin is where she left it, she realizes. The stapler isn't. The office isn't the same. This is not her office, but her name is emblazoned onto the placard that's propped on a pile of books about misuse of magical artifacts.

There's a knock on the door. She doesn't move.

"Cho?" The voice is so heartbreakingly familiar, and she could hear his laughter. "Are you in there?"

Of course, her hoarse mentor tells her in her head, there are always dreadful consequences to every action when it comes to time. Several people... for example were unborn. Do you understand what this means. You cannot see. You cannot interact. You cannot change things. Time travel disrupts order and it only brings about chaos.

"Yes." She steels her voice. "I'm here."

Cedric, oh... her beautiful tragic Cedric opens the door. He gives her this smile that makes her heart skitter like a teenage girl.

"You look like you could use lunch."

She has a feeling. She has an inkling that something big is rumbling beneath the floors of her office. Something's changed. She doesn't know what.

But, she thinks numbly and stupidly as she puts on her jacket, none of it matters. Cedric is alive. Cedric is alive.

She closes the door of her office and the paper on her desk falls down. The pages flip over to an obscure column on the second to last page. COLD-CASE REVISITED: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BOY WHO LIVED?

 

* * *

 

Harry Potter stands in her office. He's older now, scruffier and very much different from the man who she ignores in the newspapers. He leans over her desk, and both of his palms are propped on it. He stares into her eyes, and Harry’s just cold and angry. He’s a far-cry from that blushing boy or that brave war-hero she remembers.

"You weren't supposed to be there in that maze that night," he adds. "It took awhile for things to add up." He sighed. "Something was supposed to happen that night, didn't it, Cho?"

"He did come back."

"Yeah," he said. "And a whole lot of people died instead, because they were unprepared."

Two years after his victory at the Tri-Wizard tournament, Harry was lured into the trap created by Wormtail involving Padfoot. Padfoot would have sought out Wormtail to end him. But it was a ruse. Harry ended up "dead." Padfoot, heartbroken, went after Wormtail and was never heard from again.

Voldemort, now alive, began to work secretly and people began to go missing.

The world slept and woke up to the Daily Prophet reporting on the Weird Sister's new album. The Quibbler reported one death, two and then... Xenophilius Lovegood and his daughter went missing from their house a year later. Muggleborns turned up dead.

She had graduated by then, and Dumbledore was forced to leave Hogwarts by the Ministry.

Harry, on the other hand, spent the rest of his time in hiding. He sought out Voldemort with Hermione Granger's and Ron Weasley's help--both of who no one remembers. Their fight with Voldemort ended with the horcruxes, and Ron was captured. His family was used as a lure. He ended up dead.

Harry and Hermione left to find the remaining horcruxes, before Hermione was felled in the final stand against Voldemort. Bellatrix killed her. Harry fled again.

"He's still alive," Harry said. "This Ministry." He gestured at the walls of the office. "Is crawling with his little puppets. Everyone and anyone could be watching you, Cho." She clenched her fists. "That includes your boyfriend."

He smiles at her. Cold and hardened. She narrows her gaze.

"Let's undo this mess, shall we?"

 

* * *

 

She realized that this world's Cho keeps a box of newspaper clippings about the Boy-Who-Lived in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She keeps a diary full of records and scratches and things that were going wrong and missing and people dead and she's been tracking Voldemort.

This world's Cho keeps this box a secret from her boyfriend. This world's Cho had known what damage was done. 

 

* * *

 

Cho learns soon that there's a difference between the carefree seventeen year old Cedric and the twenty-three year old Cedric. Twenty-three year old Cedric is a law abiding man, who'd die so easily in a difficult world like theirs. Twenty-three year old Cedric kisses her softly, and he caresses her hair, and he's an utter romantic.

But sometimes in the dark, she watches him while he's sleeping. He's all hard edges and soft edges. A contradiction.

Cho finds that he loves her, but he doesn't and will never know her.

He loves the Cho who's like an open book, and she's easy to read. He loves the Cho who's sincere. He loves the Cho who's meant to live and love and be happy, but she's just bitter and tired. A time traveller that conjured this world out by saving him. She made the world for him, but she couldn't bring herself to fit in it.

Harry's right, she thinks. It's time to undo this.

 

* * *

 

Harry’s waiting for in the cold, haunted Weasley burrow. There hasn’t been a single inhabitant in it in over a year or two. He peers at her in the dark and fixes his spectacles.

“They haven’t been back in a while, I suspect,” he says. The black marks on the wall are dark reminders of a fire that ravaged it. “Or ever.”

She doesn't say anything to that. 

“When we go back in time,” she begins. “We have to stop my other self from delaying Voldemort’s return. The second we were transported to the graveyard, I was attacked.”

He listens intently.

“I managed to escape,” she continued. “That’s when my polyjuice potion chose to wear off. You saw me.”

He nods.

“I pieced it together,” he said. “You were attacked, and then—”

“You stepped in to protect me like the hero you were,” she said.

“—and you summoned the Port-key and then I was back in the middle of that stadium,” he said. He opened his mouth and closed it. “I thought I’d dreamt it up, but then…”

He shook his head.

“What do you intend to tell me with this?” he asked. "Let's get on with it!"

She sighed. “You were always so impatient, weren’t you, Harry?”

He blinked at her.

“If your life has been played with as much as mine—” he said quietly. He broke off. “Nevermind that. How do we do this?”

“We stop my former self from saving Cedric,” she said. “But there’s a double paradox.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“Utter chaos.”

 

* * *

 

In the maze, twenty-three year old Harry’s off to find the Tri-Wizard cup, and she watches herself move through the shadows in the dark. The first bout of red sparks fill the sky, and Cedric Diggory falls to the ground. Cedric will live, she thinks. The world around them is wobbly, shifty and uneasy.

Flashes of thunder move over the sky.

The double paradox, she thinks. Utter Chaos. She’s defied the logic of time, and she’s substituted it with her own logic. Her own flawed logic. In this logical sequence, time must right itself.

She shoots a stunner at Harry, who’s about to grab the Tri-Wizard Cup. He crumples to the ground, and Cedric Diggory—poly-juiced as herself—looks back at her.

“Cedric is safe,” she says. “There’s no need for you to interfere with this.”

“What are you doing here?” The other Cho widens her eyes. “You’ll… you’ll ruin everything! This is a double paradox.”

Flashes of lighting move across the sky, and the dark clouds roll over them. It swirls madly.

“I suppose it is,” she says. “There’s only one logic to chaos. Order. Order demands that neither of us lives.”

The other Cho narrows her eyes. She raises her wand. That’s when there’s a flash of green over her elbow and the blast hits the other Cho in the chest. She hits the ground and she turns to black ash. The skies above them rumble powerfully, and Harry steps past her.

He gives his other self a dismissive glance.

“Like we discussed,” he says. “Your job is to tell him everything.”

“Like we discussed,” she agrees.

He turned towards the glowing tri-wizard cup.

“Voldemort is there,” he says. “He’ll be there.” There’s a hungry gleam in his eyes.

“Yes,” she says.

He licks his lips. “Voldemort will resurrect tonight,” he says. “Or I fulfill the prophecy.”

“Just like the last time,” she replied. “Does your scar hurt, Harry?”

“It burns,” he replied with a feral grin. He reaches over for the Tri-Wizard cup. He grabs the cup. His younger self blinks groggily. Harry warps out in a flash.

She knows he’s not going to survive long. He’ll probably do the job, and his time will end here. Or perhaps time will end him. He’s dangerous and unstable. A product of the prophecy, and the world cannot have two saviors. Cho lied. Harry tried, and perhaps he’ll succeed to kill Voldemort, but she doesn’t know the consequences he’ll bear.

She glances up at the rumbling and rolling sky.

Only one will live.  

She turns to the Harry who’s lying on the ground, and she points her wand at him.

“Renervate.”

He blinks, and he turns over to look at her. She kneels in front of him as he tries to right himself. He looks at her confusedly.

“My name is Cho Chang,” she begins. “But I’m not Cho Chang from your present. As bizarre as this sounds, I need you to believe it. I’m from the future.”

He blinks at her.

“I’m about to tell you something unbelievable, but you’re a Wizard, Harry. Surely, you’ve seen more unbelievable things.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but she shuts him up.

“Listen carefully.”

 

* * *

 

Harry spent a good amount of his years after and during Hogwarts searching down the horcruxes with Dumbledore’s help. Their story ends like that. The world is peaceful again. Harry watches Cho Chang—with her bright smile at Cedric—and he remembers the haunting woman who tells him what he ought to do to ensure Voldemort’s defeat before she flickered away.

She catches his eyes.

He looks away.

Perhaps he’ll never see her again.

 

* * *

 

When she turns 23, Cho leaves her job in the Department of Magical Misuse to be an unspeakable. She works long hours at the department which costs her relationships with Cedric Diggory. But Cedric and her have been drifting apart, and she doesn’t waste time trying to relight it. A year later, she finds out that he’s dating a former Hufflepuff, and there’s a twinge, but she doesn’t allow herself to dwell on the happier memories.

Regret is a pit that she doesn’t want to fall into this time around.

One night as she’s leaving for her empty apartment, she sees Harry Potter in the elevator. She pushes the button.

“I heard you left your job,” he says.

“I did,” she replies.

“What has attracted you to this position as an unspeakable…” he asks, and he adds in a lower voice. “This time around?”

She catches the end of his sentence.

“A general fascination with the mysteries of magic and the universe, and a curiosity and willingness to go beyond my limits.”

“Curiosity about time?” he asks. There’s a hint of wariness.

“Love,” she says with a smile. “This time around. The infinite mysteries of the human heart and it’s capacity for great destruction.”

He widens his eyes a fraction. She sometimes wondered if he still had that school boy crush on her. Her Harry—the one who she was used to with all his pomp and glory—was civil with her, and eventually, she grew to pretend he didn’t exist. This Harry, however, seemed a little bit off. A bit humbler. He’s lost his arrogant edge.

He looks at her like she matters a lot to him. Like he’s spent hours contemplating her and trying to unravel the mysteries of this time-traveller.

“Also,” she says. “The time turners have been destroyed.” The elevator dings to the almost empty atrium. “And any remnants of it.”

They both share a wry smile.

“Order,” he replied. “You told me to restore order and eradicate any form of chaos. Any way that you would return back to the past.”

She nods at him.

“I should get going.”

“I’ll see you around,” he said. “I guess.”

“Yeah,” she said. He is order, she thinks. She’s chaos.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I came up with in chat a long time ago. Literally every bit of this was written on a discord channel message to a group of friend and we all got really hyped and forgot about it. I edited bits and pieces for clarity, but not for spelling/grammar. I still wouldn’t say it’s a final version, but honestly, I hope you enjoy.  
> If you have questions? Uhhh, you can ask them? I can’t guarantee I would remember everything about this fic.


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